Rubén Rosario: Tackling life's great unanswerable questions

There's a local TV news station that has a segment called "Good question."

Some of the questions are informative. Others are merely OK, bordering on trivia.

Given that I'm really tired of partisan political discourse, sports talk, the celebrity scandal of the week and too many Facebook posts that make it seem everyone but me is having a heck of a good time all the time, I went in search of deeper questions to contemplate.

You know, the really profound questions of life. I checked out some online sites. Most offered cheesy, sometimes humorous questions, such as: "Why don't fortune tellers win the lottery?"

I wanted something far more meaningful. Then I stumbled upon a site titled "65 deep philosophical questions."

That's it. Can't get more navel gazing than that. It contained questions that I'm sure we occasionally think about but rarely sit down to analyze or extrapolate in the midst of the busy or distracted lives many of us lead. As a public service, I selected a few and answered them for you to the best of my ability. I'll start with the easy ones first.

Q: Is it worse to fail at something or never attempt it in the first place?

A: This is a breeze. Never trying is worse. Failure is a teacher. It either makes you realize you need to get more motivated or better at something, or it lets you know that you may really be cut out to do or accomplish something else. Now, it depends on the action that leads to the failure.

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Flunking a test is far different than jumping from a tall cliff to see if you can survive the fall. You may not get a second chance. You get my drift?

Q: What happens after we die?

A: Another easy one.

I really don't know. No one I know who is living truly does. Most followers of major organized religions deeply believe in an afterlife that is eternal. Atheists don't, unless there are some out there who believe in an afterlife that does not require the existence of a God. There are quite a number of folks who describe in eerily similar ways the existence of an afterlife after a near-death experience. Cynics dismiss those experiences as the products of the power of suggestion. I'll try to get the word out after my ticket gets punched. But don't hold your breath.

Q: Is it easier to love or be loved?

A: This is the last easy one. No doubt. To be loved is far easier. Why? There's no input on your part, no sacrifice, no surrender, no vulnerability, no risk of getting your heart broken, unlike the person who is giving you that love unconditionally.

Q: Is it more important to be liked or respected?

A: Tricky, this one. I would like both in a perfect world. It reminds me of the scene in the movie "Bronx Tale" where the kid asks the mob boss if it is better to be loved than feared. The gangster, given his lot in life, expressed his desire to have both but chose fear because "it lasts longer than love." Makes sense in the underworld. I choose like because you can respect someone's ability in something and not like them, but you cannot like someone as a person you don't also respect. Man, that's deep.

Q: Can we have happiness without sadness?

A: This one made me pause a bit. I have met both very happy and very unhappy people. Sometimes, they were the same person reacting to circumstances in their lives at that moment. There are also many people that put on a front on both ends. As I told my wife, I've been content and even joyous at times in my life, but I don't know if I have ever been consistently "happy" or sad. But how do you define happiness without an opposite feeling to measure against it? So, no, you need both to define each other.

Q: If lying is wrong, are white lies OK?

A: This might get me quite a number of Hail Marys and Our Fathers the next time I go to confession. Again, it depends on the white lie. If it is to spare or temporarily minimize another person's pain, embarrassment, humiliation or other adverse outcome, then white lies may be all right. They are often used as a tactful way to call an emergency timeout before allowing the truth to come out at a more proper time. But if the white lie is mostly self-serving, then no. You are eventually deluding yourself. How's that, Father?